Advertising, branding, and marketing are essential for every ecommerce business. Without a strong brand, your product will likely be lost in the sea of other products in the same category. However, it takes a lot of money to improve your brand’s image and make it stand out from the crowd. Not all businesses can afford expensive advertising campaigns or hire top-notch designers and developers to create beautiful websites that users enjoy visiting. Fortunately, enough, there are many low-cost ways to attract customers to your ecommerce site without lowering your prices or compromising on quality. In this post, we’ll explore some of these techniques so you can start using them right away.
Why Lowering Price is Not Always the Answer
Lowering the price is not always the answer. Companies often think that if they lower their prices, customers will flock to them in droves and make up for the lost profit margin by selling more products. However, this strategy can backfire if it’s not done right.
You don’t want to lessen the power of your brand identity. While Walmart makes incredible profits, they also are associated with cheaply made products that are good in a pinch, but not for the long term. Unless you are willing to invest billions of dollars in competing with the massive retail giant on their terms, you are better off focusing on quality over quantity at fair market prices that don’t undercut what you are offering.
If your goal is to attract more customers without lowering prices, here are some ideas:
9 Ways to Add Value to Your Products
1 – Ensure High-Quality Items
The first way to attract customers without lowering prices is by ensuring that your products are of high quality. High-quality items are more likely to be bought, and they’re also more likely to sell at a higher price point than their lower-quality counterparts.
How do you know if an item is of high quality? Test out the product yourself first, read reviews from other shoppers, and look at the time, materials, and effort that went into the manufacturing process. Once this research is done, hang onto it! All that verification can be used on social media to attract consumers down the road.
2 – Solve a Consumer Need
The second way to attract customers to your ecommerce site is by solving a consumer need. Again, the more you know about your target audience, the better you can address their needs.
For example, if you’re selling fitness equipment and clothing for women who are trying to lose weight and tone up, then one of your main goals should be helping them stay motivated throughout their journey. You could offer tips on nutrition or exercise routines and provide an easy way for them to track their progress over time (e.g., through a calendar).
When your product or service directly addresses a core need from a potential client, you immediately increase the value of your brand.
3 – Show Your Products are a Valuable Investment
Showcase the quality of your products. Let’s say you’re selling custom-made leather bags, and there’s nothing quite like them on the market. Showcase this in your marketing by showing off all the steps involved in making each bag, from start to finish.
You could even tell stories about how long it took for each artisan to complete their work or how much time was spent perfecting their craft. This will help customers see that they’re paying for something truly unique and memorable by showing off its uniqueness through quality content like videos and photos.
When you’re selling a product that lasts longer than most others out there, then show off its longevity. You are leaning into a core attribute people are willing to pay more for when they shop.
4 – Add to Your Target Consumer’s Identity
There is a significant move to social awareness and issues that people support with their shopping dollars. That could be everything from gender equality, languages, culture, religion, and even favourite sports teams. You are trying to find those essential items that expand on the identity your target market already associates with their core image.
5 – Align Your Products to Your Customer’s Values
There’s nothing wrong with lowering your prices to attract customers, but sometimes it’s more effective to create a product that aligns with the values of your customer base.
This works because people don’t just shop based on price. They also consider whether the product they buy aligns with their values and makes them feel good about themselves. If you can give someone a product they can feel good about purchasing, then they’re much more likely to buy from you again in the future.
This is different from pure identity. Values are our shared beliefs and passions. They are the motivating factors of our spirit that, when tapped into, create a powerful bond between you as a brand and them as a long time loyal ambassador.
6 – Sell Convenience
You can sell convenience to your customers by offering them options they don’t have with other sites. But the much easier solution is to sell the idea of convenience in the product itself.
Convenient products save customers time and effort, leading to a more positive purchasing experience and higher customer satisfaction. When customers have a positive experience with a product or company, they are more likely to return for future purchases and recommend the brand to others. This means higher sales and a greater chance of repeat business in the future.
7 – Create FOMO
Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a marketing strategy that can be used to increase sales. FOMO is a psychological tactic that makes customers feel like they have to buy something before it’s too late and someone else gets it first.
The best way to use this technique is by creating limited-time offers or incentives for customers who purchase on your site within a certain time frame. Or, you can showcase user-generated content that demonstrates how much joy everyone else is getting, and that will make others feel like they are missing out if they don’t make a purchase as well.
8 – Target Kids
Kids are a great target audience. Targeting your products toward kids ensures you get access to the purchasing power of their parents, grandparents, and other extended family members. You want to offer products that solve problems in education, experiences, and enjoyment. This way, you create massive value without dropping your prices down to razor-thin profit margins.
9 – Appeal to Personal Security & Privacy
People are more concerned than ever about their personal security, and for a good reason. With so many privacy breaches in the news every day, it can feel like your information is being leaked out of every pore of your life.
The good news is that you can use this fear as leverage in your marketing efforts by creating a sense of security on your ecommerce site. The more safe consumers feel when shopping on your ecommerce site, the more likely they are to refer your brand to friends, family, and co-workers. That word-of-mouth marketing is priceless.
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Conclusion
If you want to attract customers to your ecommerce site, then you need to make it as appealing as possible. You can do this by lowering prices or adding value to your products, but there are other ways as well. The key is finding what works best for your business and then sticking with it!